California fights Trump’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census

California, home to 1 in 4 of the nation’s foreign-born population, is pushing back against the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

On Monday, just as President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the upcoming census, Thomas Brunell, reportedly withdrew himself from consideration for the post, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and 18 other state attorneys general registered their opposition to the question.

The Justice Department has asked the Census Bureau to include a citizenship question on the upcoming report. Becerra believes the department is wrong when it argues that the addition would be “critical to the department’s enforcement of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.”

Becerra and his cohorts, in a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, add that such a question would violate the U.S. Census Bureau’s obligations under the Constitution because it requires “counting the whole number of persons in each State,” not just citizens. …